Correction of amblyopia in cats and mice after the critical period
Name
elife-70023-v1.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.62 MB
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Unknown
Checksum (MD5)
c49036ea70bdaa47cf9abb7ee24ee734
Author(s)
Fong, Ming-fai
Duffy, Kevin R
Leet, Madison P
Candler, Christian T
Bear, Mark F
Date Issued
August 2021
Journal
eLife
Publisher
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Citation
Fong, Ming-fai, Duffy, Kevin R, Leet, Madison P, Candler, Christian T and Bear, Mark F. 2021. "Correction of amblyopia in cats and mice after the critical period." eLife, 10.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Monocular deprivation early in development causes amblyopia, a severe visual impairment. Prognosis is poor if therapy is initiated after an early critical period. However, clinical observations have shown that recovery from amblyopia can occur later in life when the non-deprived (fellow) eye is removed. The traditional interpretation of this finding is that vision is improved simply by the elimination of interocular suppression in primary visual cortex, revealing responses to previously subthreshold input. However, an alternative explanation is that silencing activity in the fellow eye establishes conditions in visual cortex that enable the weak connections from the amblyopic eye to gain strength, in which case the recovery would persist even if vision is restored in the fellow eye. Consistent with this idea, we show here in cats and mice that temporary inactivation of the fellow eye is sufficient to promote a full and enduring recovery from amblyopia at ages when conventional treatments fail. Thus, connections serving the amblyopic eye are capable of substantial plasticity beyond the critical period, and this potential is unleashed by reversibly silencing the fellow eye.
MIT Department
Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.70023
